The Bright Door Open
by MistressAli
Summary: A short li'l story I wrote a long while back about Snively's past and how he joined up with Robotnik.


The Bright Door Open (c) 98 by me, MistressAli  
All "Sonic the Hedgehog" characters and related indicia (c) and TM Sega.  
Used without permission.  
Devon and DaSilva (c) me!

The usual... this story contains: some tame violence & swearing...just a warning... :)

"The Bright Door Open"

**It was not that Uncle Julian was a nice guy.** He thought idly. **He was a human computer. Cold, calculating. A lover of machines, not people.** The boy shifted his feet, ingoring the joustling of kids around him.  
"Get a job," his father, Beau, had screamed that morning. "You never do anything. Yer lazy." Then he'd whipped Ma's favorite paperweight. It hit his son in the ribs, giving him a bruise to carry to school.  
**I hate him**, thought the boy resentfully, waiting for the hoverbus. They'd just moved to this silly planet, Mobius, from Earth. Pops thought it would help his sickly wife, and besides...the fourth World War was raging on Earth.  
Mobius was all right. Lots of silly talking animals, but all the human settlers lived in their own colony. A lot of people he knew had moved here. Including other family members.  
The bus came. He took the back seat as always. They all taunted as always. The girls especially. They pretended they liked him, fighting over him. But it was all a joke. No one liked that boy.  
**Uncle Julian is a dick. He's worse as pops. He just doesn't show it. Not yet. He wants me as his assistant. He said so. It could pay good. It'd get pops off my back.**  
His siblings had had the sense to move out long ago. **But I'm stupid**, he thought. **I just stay with pops and everyday gets worse. He never picks on the cousins. It isn't fair.**  
He was surprised to find himself sitting in first hour. While he had been thinking, debating, his body had moved on autopilot to this class.  
"Snively," growled the teacher. "Answer the question. Stop daydreaming. You're always daydreaming."  
My name isn't Snively, he wanted to say, but didn't. It wasn't really his name, but nobody knew that except his family. And they said Snively anyway.  
His father had started it. He'd been drunk and had subjected his son to a beating after Sniv' had neglected to do the dishes.  
It hurt like hell. Pops hit awful hard with the belt, harder when he was drunk. He drew blood. His son had started crying and whimpering and pops had bawled. "Stop yer whinin', ya puss. Snivelin', what's wrong with ya?! Little sniveler." He'd laughed. "Sniveler, eh, I like that. I'll call ya that from now on. Snively, how's that sound?"  
It sounded fine, because the beating had stopped.  
But now it didn't. Because the stupid name had stuck. He was registered as Snively at the schools. Everyone called him it. It just made him hate his pops even more.  
He gave the teacher his coldest look, which wasn't difficult. His eyes were as pale and blue as a frozen lake.  
The teacher scowled, but moved on to another student.  
He didn't care. He laid his head down to sleep. Writing class was not his cup of tea. **I'm not creative enough**, he figured, but that wasn't true. He was very creative. Extremely smart. But writing involved feelings, and he didn't like dealing with feelings. Especially since his feelings only came in a pair: sorrow and anger.  
**Fourteen is too young to feel like this**, he thought. He thought back to where it'd started...

He was walking home from school one afternoon.  
"Hey fag." A group of boys greeted him as he took an alleyway shortcut.  
He was small and skinny. He could fight if provoked. But this was five against one. He tried to run but it was too late.  
Five minutes later, the boys had run off.  
He slowly sat up, whimpering. They'd torn up his books and papers. And slashed his favorite picture of his mama to pieces.  
She was dying, his mama. Had cancer. They had moved to Mobius partly because of her, hoping there would be cures or the environment would be healthier, but still she was dying. It was awful, for she was the only one who truly loved him.  
He scraped up the pieces of her picture. Seeing her in fragments hurt him worse than the bruises and bloody nose the boys had given him. "Mama," he whispered.

It had been a bad omen. He never thought the tearing of her picture would be the tearing of her life. When he got home the house was empty.  
His father got home later.  
"Where's mama?"  
"She's dead," said Beau bluntly. He had a full bottle of hard whiskey wrapped up in a brown paper bag. It was open and his breath reeked.  
"Dead?" Snively repeated the word blankly.  
"Yeah, dead."  
"No! She can't be! NOOO!"  
"Shut up! She's dead, now shut up, you little bastard! Yer whining ain't gonna bring her back."  
"But she can't be...she just can't..."  
Snively was whimpering and clutching his father's arm.  
"I said shut up!"  
"But she can't...."  
The day ended on a terrible note. The father beat his son senseless and then drank himself into a stupor, while a corny sitcom belched out laughtrack after laughtrack...

*************

Life got worse and death seemed to be a bright beautiful doorway to enter.  
But Snively was too frightened to ever kill himself. Instead, he endured his father's abuse, his mother's death, the disapproval of his teachers (who thought he was too sullen and withdrawn), the taunting of his classmates, and the group of boys who chased him home everyday.  
He learned how to run incredibly far and fast, although his weak lungs stopped him sometimes. The track coach wanted to recruit him, but he refused.  
Instead, he went over to the huge college/library, where he listened to lectures and talked with the highly intellectual students. The professors liked him and he talked to them with such fever and excitement, they were sure he could overcome his bad childhood and really be something.  
His life got better.

His father received notice that one of his wife's brothers had been killed. His wife, Fala, had three brothers...Julian, Toby, and Lyle. Now Lyle was dead...his wife too, and their two girls were abandoned.  
Beau decided to take them in. He'd always liked them...and he thought the two girls had a helluva lot more potential then his own children. So Devon and DaSilva came to live with them.  
Life was better with them around, because Beau doted on them, and ignored Snively. Which was good, because his attentions towards his son were always violent.  
Devon was a bit of a strange case for Snively.... because she harbored a strange liking for him. He always felt uncomfortable around her...

So he continued to go to the college. And the professors continued to think he was really going to be something. And they might've been right, were it not for another frequent visitor to their college.  
Usually Snively and this visitor missed each other, but today was different. Snively skipped his first class and then decided the entire school day was useless and meaningless compared to what he experienced at the college.

So, Snively discovered his future boss at the college. He strutted in, not caring if they knew he was playing hooky. He wandered around the library and he saw a fat man browsing in the computer section. There was something familiar...the orange mustache...the commanding stance.  
"Uncle Julian?" he said timidly.  
The fat man turned, his eyes taking in a skinny brown-haired blue-eyed teen that stood at the end of the aisle.  
"Who..." Then he remembered. That was his dead sister's child...the one with the strange name... "Yes...S...Snively, that's it. How are you?"  
"I'm fine," responded his nephew. "What are you doing here?"  
"I come here every morning."  
Snively peered at the book Julian had. 'All you want to know about robots.' "I've read that."  
"Really?" Julian looked at the scrawny boy with interest. His sister...before she died and had been vibrant...had often bragged how smart her youngest son was.  
"I didn't know you lived on Mobius."  
"Oh yes. I moved here around the same time as your mother."  
Sniv' looked like he was going to leave at that point, and Julian realized the kid was still torn up over his mother's death. "What are your other interests?" he asked.  
"Oh, I like robots and computers and math, science, that sort of thing..."  
Julian approved and nodded. "That is very good. You have good taste."  
Sniv' grinned a toothy grin which made Julian inwardly wince. He fought off a strong urge to slap his nephew silly.  
"How come you never visit?" The last Snively had heard of his aloof uncle was that he'd been blinded and deafened in an accident. His eyes were replaced by computerized ones which made his vision even sharper than it'd been before. They were a creepy red on black. His ears were little computerized cylinders on the sides of his head.  
"Your father," growled Julian. "I disapprove of him."  
So the conversation eventually turned to Julian's need of an assistant. Snively talked to his professor friends later and they urged him to take up the offer. They didn't know his entire home situation, but they knew his father was abusive...at least to him.  
**Julian isn't exactly nice...but he's not violent. He won't hit me like pops. Maybe he'll even be less distant when we get to know each other.**  
But he didn't take up the offer right away. He waited awhile. But Julian stopped visiting the library.  
Sniv' was a bit disappointed.

A few months passed, and one day Julian was there.  
"I've joined the side of King Acorn," he said. "And I need an assistant NOW. I need your answer tomorrow, Snively, because I have to be heading back very soon. I live in the king's castle now...so consider it carefully. "

So Snively tramped home that day. He'd sleep on it. He avoided the boys for once, and entered his crappy apartment unscathed.  
"Bastard," his pops greeted him. The girls weren't home. Devon and DaSilva were both on the basketball team, plus they dated. Pops had been harassing Sniv' more often than usual.  
"Hello pops," he said politely.  
"Don't take that tone with me!"  
Snively sighed and headed for his room.  
"Teacher called."  
Snively stiffened.  
"Yer first hour. They said you were daydreamin' again. And then you skipped the rest of the day. Am I gonna have to knock them clouds out of your head?"  
"No...but I wasn't daydreaming. I was thinking."  
"Yeah. About what?" His pops snorted and drank from his ever-present bottle.  
"About Uncle Julian. He wants me as his assistant. He wants me to go with him...he lives in the castle."  
His pop's eyes bulged. "When you been talking to him?!"  
"In the college," stammered Snively.  
"You don't talk to him, boy." His father set down the bottle and his fists clenched.  
"Why shouldn't I?" demanded Snively, though he knew he was walking the thinnest ice.  
"Fer one, the bastard's a traitor. Switched sides from Overlander to that furry-assed king. And the second...man, you think I'm bad...you don't know shit. He's not good. He'll ruin you."  
"You don't know anything!" Snively yelled. "Yer drunk! Shut up!"  
His pops did shut up a few minutes later. He slurped his whisky contently, his dilated pupils gazing at the TV screen. The volume was loud enough to drown out a bruised and bleeding boy's whimpering.

That tears it, Snively thought the next day after a teacher chewed him out for finally lashing out at one of the boys who bullied him. As Snively stomped out of the classroom and down to the college, he felt a sense of satisfaction. He'd just punched the leader of the group who chased him. He'd made him cry. He'd split the boy's lip in two. He had blood on his shirt, but he felt very good indeed. It wasn't his blood.

Julian was pleased with Snively's decision. The next day they were flying back in a hovercraft towards the Acorn kingdom.  
He was leaving behind his two cousins...Devon who cared so much about him. He was a bit concerned about the Mobians...the thought of intelligent animals both frightened and intrigued him. Would they be nice? Or would it be the exact opposite of Earth, instead of humans mistreating animals, would animals mistreat humans?  
He asked Julian, and his uncle insisted that they were civil, even more so than humans.  
If Sniv' had known his future he would've never gone.  
But all he felt at the moment was a strange wonderful feeling. The door of death was closing, the bright door of life opening.  
He felt content for once.

The End...


End file.
